A physician's enthusiasm for a drug has a way of making it work better for
the patient (increases the placebo effect) and perhaps ensures that the
physician remembers positive results better than negative ones. It was
because of this factor that the double blind technique was developed for
doing clinical research. (Family myth has it that my father developed it,
but at least I do know that he was first author of the first widely cited
study using it in 1950.) A fellow Cornell Univ. student, Deborah Rothman,
did a study in the 1970s in Ethiopia whereby infants with kwashiorkor
(severe malnutrition characterized by protein deficiency such that all
enzyme levels can be expected to be greatly reduced) in a metabolic ward
were given ordinary infant formula or lactose free infant formula.
Amazingly, there was very little if any benefit for even these babies of
avoiding lactose in the diet. There is a saying in Swedish (which rhymes),
"to measure is to know."
Ted Greiner, PhD
Senior Lecturer in International Nutrition
Unit for International Child Health, Entrance 11
Uppsala University
75185 Uppsala
Sweden

phone +46 - 18 511598
fax   +46 - 18 515380

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